How to Keep Your Travel Blog Running When You’re Not Traveling

2011 is going to be a busy year for me what with a full-time job and part-time grad school. It’s a struggle to fit time in for travel and keep this blog updated and just when I think it is all too much, I think of Monica Wong from A Pair of Panties and Boxers. This girl does it all and still manages to put forth an amazing travel blog. She is the perfect candidate to give some prime advice on how to keep your blog going during the chaos and deliver quality travel posts to the masses.

Working a 9-7 with only 10 vacation days isn’t exactly conducive to maintaining a travel blog. It’s been months since I’ve traveled anywhere. So how do I keep my blog running when I’m not on the road? I’ve featured guest bloggers, accepted sponsored posts and shared photos to reminisce about my previous travels. They are some of the most common ways to add content to your blog but that can get old so once in a while, I like to shake things up a little. Here are a few creative ways I’ve kept my blog running.

Respond to other travel blogs

With so many amazing travel blogs, there has to be at least one post a month that really gets your attention. A post like this makes you feel so passionate that you find yourself typing more words than the actual post itself. This is where you stop what you’re doing and copy and paste your comment to a notepad or Word doc. Why? Because you’ve just got yourself a brand new post!

Whether it’s an appraisal or a rebuttal, take that comment-turned-blog post and share it with your readers. I read a guest post earlier this year by Steve Wade on Art of Backpacking where he expressed his opinion that traveling is the easy way out. Before I even finished the first paragraph, I felt a fury energy being released from my fingertips to the computer screen. The end result was a novel-length- comment-turned-blog post entitled, Traveling Takes Courage But The 9-5 Grind Isn’t For Punks Either.

Photo Collections

Who doesn’t love pretty pictures? Who doesn’t love cute kids? Who doesn’t love a little link loving from their fellow travel bloggers? After a while of sharing photos from my past trips, I was beginning to run low on quality photos. So, what did I do? I asked my fellow wanderlusters on Facebook, Twitter and via email to submit some of their travel photos to me. I’ve collected them by theme and here are some of the end results:

Technically, photo collections are considered crowdsourcing because you’re, well, sourcing from the crowd. But instead of doing photo collections, you can just about crowdsource anything. For example, I had absolutely no Christmas-related content to publish before the holiday season so what did I do? I asked my fellow travelers where they will be on Christmas Day and shared their comments on my blog in Dear Travelers, Where Will You be This Christmas?

Go Local

Your backyard might be well traveled by you but it’s fresh territory for someone else. Write about the city you live in. Write about the neighborhood you grew up in. It’s close to home and no one is a better expert than you. It might not be as exotic as Mozambique but it’s still considered a travel post by someone who doesn’t live there.

Monica Wong is a social media account coordinator and the author of A Pair of Panties & Boxers. She used to want the corner office. Now she wants the world. Follow her as she shares her travels around the world & her travels through life. Either way she travels, it’s food for her soul. You can also follow her on Twitter @monica530.

Very original ideas, thanks for sharing them. It’s hard to find new content to write on a regular basis, especially when you’re stuck at home. Photo essays are probably a good way to get numerous comments too.

Great post both Monica and Joya!
I love the idea to take a comment and turn it into a post! Very smart! too many times do I write an extremely long comment like that…. haha
I have yet to do much with photos – do you guys use Flickr, Smugmug or something else?

Thanks Cailin! I just found an article on why we should keep travel journals that made me think of a great blog post so it’s a great idea from Monica. I actually haven’t been using photo sharing sites but just compiling everything into Picasa. I probably should and may use Picasa’s site or Flickr.